


Interspecies Communication

by GenericUsername01



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 04:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13159740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: Seven things Nyota Uhura wasn't expecting when she learned she'd be roommates with an Orion.





	Interspecies Communication

**Author's Note:**

> Ludubyaln = Orion word for slave girls, literally “life contractor”

**_1._ **

There. Room A221. Nyota swiped her thumbprint across the scanner and the door opened to her. 

“Oh, hi!” came a voice off to the side of the room. Nyota spun and caught sight of a very naked Orion woman lying sprawled across a bed, textbook open in front of her. 

“What—what are you—you’re naked!” 

She laughed. “Yep. Sure am.” 

 _“Why?!”_  

“Uh. Why not?” 

“Because that’s—Okay,” Nyota took a deep breath. “Humans have a huge taboo against public nudity, okay?” 

“What? Why?” 

“I don’t know, you’d have to ask a sociologist. Look, can you just please—put some clothes on?” 

“But this isn’t even public nudity. I’m in my private dorm room.” 

“Yes, but  _I’m_  here.” 

The woman looked at her for a long moment, then sighed and crossed over to her suitcase. Nyota hurriedly punched the button that made the door to the hallway close. The woman put on extremely lacy hot pink underwear made of some foreign fabric Nyota had never seen before, and she tried her hardest not to stare, face burning and fixed firmly on the ground. 

“Okay. Let’s start over,” she said, now that at least the woman was somewhat covered. “My name is Nyota Uhura, and I’m your roommate.”  

The woman smiled, and it was like the sun come out between parting clouds. “I’m Gaila Vro. May our souls find happiness together.” 

* * *

**_2._ **

Nyota stepped back into the room after leaving her Advanced Ferengi class. 

Gaila was curled up in her bed, crying silently. She stiffened and wiped her tears when Nyota walked. 

“Hi,” she said, smiling. “How’d your class go?” 

She sat down on the end of her bed. “Are you okay? What happened?” 

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just—nothing.” 

“Gaila, you can talk to me. I’m not going to judge you.” 

She sighed and brushed her hair out of her face. “I failed my Written Standard test.” 

“Oh.” What else could she say to that? It hadn’t even occurred to her, but of course, ludubyaln weren’t allowed to learn to read. She just hadn’t realized that Gaila was one of them. 

She was a freed slave living on a foreign planet with no formal education and she was going to college. Nyota took a moment to be quietly awed. 

“Hey,” she said softly. “It’s alright. You’ll do better next time. Maybe your professor will let you retake the test.” 

“They do that?” 

“Sure,” she said. “People do it all the time.” 

She slumped. “It doesn’t matter. I’d just fail it all over again. Standard’s too hard, I just can’t read it.” 

“I can tutor you,” Nyota said. “I’m communications track. Languages are sorta my thing.” 

“You would do that?” 

“I’d be happy to.” 

Gaila knew better than to think there was any such thing as a free lunch. “What do you want in return?” 

“Nothing,” she shrugged. 

Ah. She’d had a fair bit of experience with people who expected to be repaid with ‘nothing.’ Some people liked to think of themselves as good or kind or whatever, and thought that entailed giving out favors with no expectation of return. 

But the thing was, they always expected returns. They expected respect, they expected immense gratitude, they expected hero worship of the savior alien who had done something kind to a pitiful Orion slave. And lots of the time—even if they wouldn’t admit it to themselves—they wanted sex. 

Gaila wasn’t one to have unpaid debts. 

She slunk out from under the covers and snaked a hand up Nyota’s arm, coming to rest at the nape of her neck. She looked up at her through still-wet eyelashes. “You sure there isn’t anything I can do for you?” 

But Nyota just looked at her, levelly, like she was a puzzle she was trying to figure out. She knew a distress signal when she saw one. She gently removed Gaila’s hand from her neck.  

“If you feel like you absolutely have to pay me back, then why don’t you help me practice my Orion? I’ve been getting rusty.” 

* * *

**_3._ **

Gaila followed her gaze to a Vulcan in a black professor’s uniform. She looked back at Nyota, then at the Vulcan, then really at Nyota. 

Dreamy gaze. Trailed off mid-sentence. Thoroughly distracted by his presence. 

“You have a crush!” she said, with way too much enthusiasm for Nyota’s liking. She felt her face heat up and snapped back to attention. 

“No, I do not,” she hissed. 

“Yes, you do! You totally do!” she grinned wide as she could. “I could help you get him, you know.” 

 _“No._  Gaila, please tell me you are not going to interfere.” 

“Okay.” She nodded happily. 

“I’m serious.” 

“Uh-huh.”  

She sighed and accepted her fate. 

* * *

_**4.** _

“Alright, well I gotta get to class,” Nyota said, gathering up her books. 

“Alright. See you later!” Gaila said, planting a light kiss on her lips. She gasped. 

“What was  _that?!”_  

“What do you mean?” 

“You kissed me!” 

“Yeah?” 

“What—You can’t just do that!” 

“Why not? We’re friends, right?” 

Nyota breathed. “Friends on Earth don’t really kiss each other. That’s—intimate.” 

“Oh.  _Oh,”_  she blushed verdant, suddenly understanding. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable—“ 

“No, it’s fine, you didn’t know—“ 

“It’s not fine, you didn’t consent and I crossed a boundary—“ 

“Really, Gaila, it’s okay—“ 

“No! You can’t just—“ 

 _“Gaila.”_  She put her hands on her arms, holding her still. “It’s  _fine._  You didn’t know.” 

She bit her lip, and Nyota’s eyes were drawn to the motion. “You sure?” 

“Yes,” she said firmly. 

Gaila stared into her eyes for a long moment, searching. “Okay.” 

“Okay.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You’re forgiven,” she smiled reassuringly. She readjusted her books and slipped out the door, then leaned against it with a sigh. 

She brought a hand up to her lips, chasing the sensation. 

* * *

  **_5_ ** **_._ **

Her comm beeped, and she answered it automatically. “Hello?” 

“Is this Nyota Uhura?” 

“Yes, this is she.” 

“We need you to come down to sickbay immediately. We have a Gaila Vro here, and you’re listed as her emergency contact.” 

“Oh my god, what happened? Is she okay?” 

“She will be. …I’d prefer to explain the situation in person.” 

“I’ll be right there,” she promised, hanging up. She slung her bag over her shoulder and marched across campus, slipping through the throngs of students with ease. Sickbay was a three-minutes’ walk away normally; Nyota made it there in two. 

A nurse directed her to the correct room and she entered hesitantly, unsure what she was going to find. 

“Gaila?” she asked quietly. Fearfully. 

And there was Gaila, lying spread-eagle on the hospital bed and naked as the day she’d met her. There were maybe a dozen medical-grade sunlamps trained on her. She looked weak and pale, her skin celery green, her body slumped in exhaustion, her eyes listless. 

“Hi, Nyota,” she said in a crackly voice.

“What happened?” she asked. 

“Oh, nothing. I just fainted in Encryptions & Coding and everybody freaked out. I’m fine.”

“Gaila, why’d you pass out? What’s going on?” 

She sighed. “I’m malnourished.” 

Nyota had been concerned about that. She almost never saw her roommate eating. When she asked about it, she’d been brushed off with a dismissal about how Orion biology differed from humans and they didn’t need to eat as much. Xenobiology not being her forte, Nyota had had no choice but to take her at her word. 

She should have told somebody. She should have gotten help. God, she had noticed, but she hadn’t done anything until her roommate had to be  _hospitalized._  What sort of person was she? 

“Not for food. For sunlight,” Gaila continued. 

What. 

“What?” 

“Edible lifeforms are rare on the Orion homeworld. We evolved to have chloroplasts in our skin cells to supplement the nutrition we couldn’t get otherwise. I need to be getting 30,000 IUs of Vitamin D every day. I’ve been getting, like, 600. Which is just perfect for a human.” 

“But you’re not a human,” she said. “So what are you going to do? Are you… going back home?” 

 _“No,”_  she said vehemently. “I’m gonna be fine. I just need to go outside more and wear less clothing and take a vitamin supplement. And sit under a sun lamp for an hour every day. I’m gonna need to be naked when I do that. I know that weirds you out, but I need to expose as much skin to the light as possible. I’m sorry.” 

“No, no, don’t worry about it, it’s for medical reasons,” she said. She would just not look or find somewhere else to be for that hour. She was a grown adult, she could handle a little nudity. Besides, Gaila had apparently been actively hurting her health by trying to respect Nyota’s culture and wear clothes all the time. The least she could do was meet her halfway. 

“So I’m you’re emergency contact,” she said. A non-sequitur. And she called herself a communications officer. 

Gaila looked sheepish. “Yes, but please don’t be mad! They said I  _had_  to have an emergency contact, and I didn’t know who else to list. I can probably change it—” 

“I’m not mad,” she said. “I was just—wondering.”  

She put two and two together now. Gaila was new in town. All her friends and family were lightyears away. Nyota was her emergency contact because she had no one else on the planet. 

She decided right then that she was going to make damn sure she was okay. 

* * *

**_6._ **

She walked into her dorm to find Gaila dancing exuberantly to a human pop song. Only her style of dance wasn’t human at all. 

Orion interpretive dance. She’d read somewhere that they used it as a form of storytelling. Every movement had meaning. 

“Ny!” she squealed. “Dance with me!” 

“No, no, I couldn’t—“ 

“Come one!” She took her by the hands and pulled her into the center of the room. She moved to the beat with her whole body but never once let go of Nyota’s hands, even managing to hold on to one while executing an elaborate twirl that had Nyota laughing despite herself. 

Soon she was getting into it as well, and Gaila’s hands moved to her waist and they seemed a lot closer than before but the dance never stopped, never slowed, even when Nyota’s breath hitched in a way she hoped wasn’t noticeable and her heart nearly pounded right out of her chest.  

She should never have told Gaila not to kiss her, she thought, then chastised herself. 

* * *

_**7.** _

“Kiss me,” Nyota said suddenly. 

“What?” Gaila looked up from her book. 

She walked towards her and pitched her voice low and sultry, inviting. “Kiss me.” 

Understanding broke like dawn on her face and their lips met with a smile between them. 


End file.
